Dean’s Use of the Internet Raises His Political Profile

Re “With Click of a Mouse, Liberals Find Answer to Limbaugh,” by Ronald Brownstein, July 7: Liberals’ “mice” apparently haven’t been working too well. Rush Limbaugh has been online for about five years. Internet news is an arm of the TV networks. Flip through the TV channels during prime news time and you’ll see the same stories, with the same pictures and almost word-for-word reporting. It’s the same on your computer.

Regarding Brownstein’s statement that “voters with more education have been trending Democratic (largely around social issues) for years, and a much higher percentage of regular Internet users than talk-radio fans have college degrees”: Is he calling Republicans stupid? Well, how come (according to the Democrats) Republicans have all the money?

Phoebe Dinsmore

Los Angeles

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Re “Activists Are Out of Step,” Commentary, July 3: Al From and Bruce Reed couldn’t be more wrong in their thinly veiled characterization of Howard Dean’s supporters. I attended a meet-up for Dean recently in Studio City -- more than 100 people packed into a diner. These weren’t long-haired hippies, pinko commies or militant eco-terrorists. They were middle-class families, young professionals, people of color, senior citizens ... in short, a representation of not just the Democratic Party but the nation as a whole.

Dean is truly a rare political marvel, combining the honesty and passion of a liberal activist with the policies of a Rockefeller Republican. He’s socially progressive and economically conservative (old-school conservative, as opposed to the reckless Bush administration). That’s a winning recipe for any election.

Damian Carroll

Sherman Oaks

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Are you sure the commentary by From and Reed was written by the chief executive and president of the Democratic Leadership Council and not by President Bush or one of his spokes-cronies? It is particularly ironic that they decry candidates who would run “applause-meter campaigns,” then go on to fault liberal Democrats, as exemplified by Democratic Party convention delegates, as being out of step.

Ignoring the fact that convention delegates are likely to be better informed on the issues than nondelegates, From and Reed want to decide issues by popular opinion polls. Especially at a time like the present, when the ugliest forms of conservatism reign and many are intimidated by the administration’s labeling as suspect any questioning of its policy, the opposition had better be “out of step.” If the DLC were actually about leadership, the thought might occur to its officials that leaders lead.

Nancy M. Henley

Los Angeles

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You managed to draw a large guffaw from me when you put the editorial cartoon by Michael Ramirez (Commentary, July 3) comparing Democratic presidential wannabe Dean to defeated Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern and a commentary by Democratic Leadership Council executives From and Reed on the same page. Indeed, both are not only literally but figuratively on the “same page” -- which is “get Dean.” Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows, and From and Reed should perhaps wonder about the fact that they are in lock step with a far-right Republican opinion of Dean.

David B. Amos

Arcadia

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How brilliant of Ramirez to compare Dean to McGovern. McGovern was one of the few leaders in America who got it right and had the courage to oppose the illegal war in Vietnam based upon government lies -- 58,000 dead Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.

Dean is the one leader who has gotten it right and has shown the courage to oppose the illegal war in Iraq based upon government lies. How many dead Americans and Iraqis this time? And, for what purpose?

Hank McCann

Los Angeles